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Bombshells and Explosions, Oh My!
I’ve been watching the Schiff tribunal without swearing at the television. I will admit to laughing out loud at times. I also have used my little finger to pull down the corner of my lower eyelid. That’s an Italian gesture that my mom adopted when she and my dad lived in Italy. It’s much more polite than exclaiming “[redacted].” A subtle tug when someone is lying to you. My mom used it when she knew that her three boys were not telling her the full story. She told us the story of signs posted inside passenger trains in Italy admonishing passengers not to spit on the floor of the car. She said Italians that were offended by the signs, who had no intention of spitting on the floor of the car would instead spit on the sign. There’s a lesson in there for those who wish to become nannies in a Nanny State.
My mom and dad have passed away. My brothers and I call October the cruel month. They passed away in the month of October, one year apart from each other. We lived in India for two years when my dad was assigned to the US Embassy in New Delhi as an Assistant Naval Attache. Mom expressed what she thought of diplomatic duty in a photograph, and a comment she made on the back of the photograph. Mom is in the center of the photo, dad is in uniform. Note the man in the background holding his nose.
Later in life, they would move back to Washington DC. My dad was the Vice President of Marketing for a major defense contractor. My mom loved the museums in DC, she detested the political atmosphere. Dad would receive invitations from Congressional Representatives and Senators to attend fundraising breakfasts and dinners. Some of them from politicians that hated the military, and anybody who worked with the military. They would receive a check, but dad and mom were no-shows. DC is pay to play.
Mom would spend part of the summer in their cabin at the 6,000-foot level in the Sierra Nevadas. That cabin was the only lofty heights my mom was interested in, she did not consider DC the center of the universe, nor did she consider residency in DC the peak of achievement.
DC hasn’t changed much in light of today’s events. All that is happening in the Schiff tribunal is throwing out the words bribery, and extortion. Something that politicians do everyday DC when they seek political contributions. The polite word is sanctions which are in place, and supported by both Dems, and Republicans – Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and Turkey, just a few of the nations that have had economic pressure applied to them.
Disgruntled bureaucrats that believe they are in charge, and recognize their own authority and not the President’s, much less the voter. People who come from the best schools do not want the unwashed at their gates.
The goal is to nullify an election, or to interfere in the 2020 election. The end justifies the means. Perjury is now a virtue. The standard of a lie is not the lie itself, it is who is doing the lying. If lying is a virtue than DC is the most virtuous place on earth. The New Jerusalem, the City on a Shining Hill. DC may be on a hill, but what the hill is made of, and the smell is more like that of a stable.
Published in Politics
Doug,
Just ask Alice.
Regards,
Jim
What a life you have had! I’d like to hear more.
Your mother was a smart woman. DC hasn’t changed much and that is the problem. Trump, whether you like his methods or not, is trying to change it and they are fighting back.
One small item about DC. Remember Fawn Hall, Ollie North’s secretary who smuggled documents in her underwear ? A friend of mine was later Marine White House aide and she was his secretary, too. She got involved in the effort to circumvent the Boland Amendment that barred aid to the Contras. A worthy cause.
Smuggling documents inside underwear seems to be a thing in DC. A former Clinton staffer did the same thing when he removed documents from the Library of Congress. There is some irony there. His boss dropped his pants as well, albeit for different reasons, he obviously learned something from an expert.
And also suffered no punishment for destroying National Archives documents. Sandy Burglar.
Disgruntled bureaucrats can and do create a lot of damage. I really don’t care if their feelings are hurt by being ignored, removed from a post or disagreed with.
Sandy Berger
On the evening of Oct. 2, 2003, former White House national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger stashed highly classified documents he had taken from the National Archives beneath a construction trailer at the corner of Ninth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW so he could surreptitiously retrieve them later and take them to his office, according to a newly disclosed government investigation.
The documents he took detailed how the Clinton administration had responded to the threat of terrorist attacks at the end of 1999. Berger removed a total of five copies of the same document without authorization and later used scissors to destroy three before placing them in his office trash, the National Archives inspector general concluded in a Nov. 4, 2005, report.
Although the report reiterates that Berger’s main motive was to prepare himself for testifying before a commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, it makes clear that he not only sought to study the documents but also destroyed some copies and — when initially confronted — denied he had done so.
He was trying to sanitize the record for the Clinton Crime Machine before the 9/11 commission.
OK.
The impeachment editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal led with this opener:
Enough, already, with the D.C. hagiography.😛
<sarcasm off >
<cynicism always on >
Size matters. The old foreign service was tiny and it belonged abroad with a few key folks in Washington unlike almost all the rest of the bureaucracy which either shouldn’t have exist or should have been spread out in small pieces among some of the 48 states. Bureaucracies grow and take power. We haven’t figured out how to stop that from happening. If we don’t we’re screwed.